2nd Week of Lent 2022 - Tuesday - They preach but they do not practice

 This morning, in his Lenten reflection, Bishop Malesic recalled the words of Pope St. Paul VI from his famous exhortation on evangelization, evangelii nuntiandi. Pope Paul said, “Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses."

In the Gospel, the Lord criticizes the Pharisees: they were good teachers, but terrible witnesses. So the Lord tells his disciples “Do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example. For they preach but they do not practice.”

This reminds me of my favorite part of the ordination rite for deacons. Kneeling in front of the Bishop, the newly ordained is charged: “Receive the book of the Gospels whose herald you have become. Believe what you read. Teach what you believe. And practice what you teach.”

The ordained cannot just be preachers of the word. They must be doers of the word, as St. James would say. In fact, St. James gives that instruction to all Christians: do not just be hearers of the word, but doers of the word. In the words of Pope Paul, don’t just be teachers, but witnesses. “Preach always, sometimes use words”

This teaching is most manifest in the life of Our Lord. The Christ didn’t just preach self-sacrificial love, he manifests self-sacrificial love, taking upon himself unspeakable suffering in his Passion and Death for our salvation. 

Lent is certainly an opportunity for the church to move beyond lip service. “Show your repentance” says John the Baptist. We show our repentance not just by lip service, not just with words, words, words, but through concrete, physical, visible works of penance: prayer, fasting, almsgiving, works of charity.

Words and teaching are important. Our words and teachings must always be consistent with those of Christ, with the Apostolic Faith. but Pope Paul concludes, “It is therefore primarily by her conduct and by her life that the Church will evangelize the world, in other words, by her living witness of fidelity to the Lord Jesus- the witness of poverty and detachment, of freedom in the face of the powers of this world, in short, the witness of sanctity.”

May our faith be seen in our witness, may our repentance be seen in our good works, may our love be seen in our actions, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

 

That the season of Lent may bring the most hardened hearts to repentance and bring to all people purification of sin and selfishness.

For those preparing for baptism and the Easter sacraments, that they may continue to conform themselves to Christ through fervent prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

That we may generously respond to all those in need: the sick, the suffering, the homeless, the imprisoned, and victims of violence. And for all victims of the coronavirus and their families. And for the Church in China and all places where the Gospel is silenced.

For all who have died, and for all the poor souls in purgatory, and for X. for whom this Mass is offered.

Grant, we pray, O Lord, that your people may turn to you with all their heart, so that whatever they dare to ask in fitting prayer they may receive by your mercy. Through Christ our Lord.

May 29 2020 - Pope St. Paul VI - The New Evangelization

Today and tomorrow, the last two weekdays of Easter, our Gospel passage comes from the epilogue and the very last chapter of John’s Gospel:  The Risen Lord Jesus sits on the shore of the sea of Galilee with his apostles, who instead of going out into the world to be fishers of men, had returned to their old profession of catching fish.

But he speaks with them, reminding them of their new mission, a mission which is characterized by love. Peter, do you love me? Then feed my lambs. Peter, do you love me? Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep. Love of the Lord Jesus was to motivate and animate Peter’s mission, and the mission of all those who call themselves Christians. Love must always motivate us outward, propel us outward, direct our concern and activity outward.

Pope Benedict XVI writes in his first great encyclical on love, “ The entire activity of the Church is an expression of a love that seeks the integral good of man: it seeks his evangelization through Word and Sacrament, an undertaking that is often heroic in the way it is acted out in history; and it seeks to promote man in the various arenas of life and human activity.” How is the Lord asking me to love in a heroic way the people in my life: family, strangers, fellow parishioners?

Today the Church honors another one of Peter’s saintly successors, Pope St. Paul VI, who was Pope during the lifetime of just about everybody here this morning, save for me and the seminarian. The spread of the Gospel throughout the world was certainly one of the great themes of Paul VI’s papacy, inviting Catholics to engage in “the new evangelization”, a term he coined in his 1975 exhortation, “Evangelii Nuntiandi”,  a document Pope Francis called “the greatest pastoral document that has ever been written.

“For the Church, evangelizing means bringing the Good News into all the strata of humanity, and through its influence transforming humanity from within and making it new… to bear witness that in His Son God has loved the world - that in His Incarnate Word He has given being to all things and has called men to eternal life… Evangelization will also always contain - as the foundation, center, and at the same time, summit of its dynamism - a clear proclamation that, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, who died and rose from the dead, salvation is offered to all men, as a gift of God's grace and mercy

Love for our fellow man means concern for his eternal soul, which motivates our sharing of the Gospel with Him. Again, how is the Lord asking me to love today, love which involves sharing the Gospel, sharing the Good News, sharing the truth of God’s grace and mercy…for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
 
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Let us pray to our Heavenly Father, confident that He is generous to those who call upon Him with faith.
For Pope Francis, and all the bishops: may they rightly lead the Body of Christ in the fullness of Christian truth. And that the Holy Spirit may guide the Holy Father in choosing a new bishop for the diocese of Cleveland, a bishop who is convicted of the Truth!
For our President and all elected government representatives, may the Holy Spirit grant them wisdom and guide them to promote domestic tranquility, national unity, respect for religious freedom, and a greater reverence for the sanctity of Human Life.
That the power of Christ’s resurrection may overcome all oppression, prejudice, hatred, addiction and injustice. For those most profoundly impacted by the coronavirus, for the healing of all the sick. For those who selflessly labor for the good of others, for the safety of first responders and medical care workers, police and firefighters. For the protection of all those who serve in our nation’s military, and for all wounded servicemen and women, for all those widowed and orphaned because of war.
For the repose of the souls of our beloved dead, for all of the poor souls in purgatory, for the deceased members of our family, friends, and parish, for those who have fought and died for our freedom, and for Dennis Dentzer for whom this mass is offered.
Gracious Father, hear the prayers of your pilgrim Church, grant us your grace and lead us to the glory of your kingdom, through Christ Our Lord.

28th Sunday in OT 2018 - Joylessness and the Rich Young Man

This weekend, Pope Francis is celebrating in Rome the Canonization of six new saints. Three of them were founders of new religious orders, one of them was a humble diocesan priest, one is the great and courageous Archbishop Oscar Romero who denounced the violence of the civil war in El Salvador in 1980 and was assassinated offering mass in a hospital chapel. The sixth is Pope Paul VI, whose Papacy from 1963-1978 was marked by his deep sense of prayerfulness, as he led the Church to become a greater instrument for evangelization and conversion to the modern world.

The temperaments and lives of these new saints could not have been any different. Yet, their commonality, is certainly their love and obedience to Jesus Christ.

Like the young man in the Gospel today, they each approached the Lord, fell to their knees and asked the question: “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” For three of them it was founding a religious order for ordinary men and women like you and me to live a life of prayer and penance that points to God. For Archbishop Romero, it was standing up to a corrupt government. For Paul VI it was leading the Church in a time of social and cultural upheaval. But, “what must I do to find joy, to find eternal life?” That is probably the most important question anyone could ask.

One concern I know many priests and many of you have is that so many of our young people and so many of our family members do not consider this question important.  One of the symptoms of the secularism of our age is an indifference to eternity. Plenty of young men and women ask questions like, “what must I do to get into Harvard, what must I do to be a famous athlete, what must I do to make my first million by the age of 30, what must I do to have as much pleasure as I can?”  These are all valid questions if one is merely concerned with earthly happiness and temporal success.  But these are not concerns about ultimate reality.  So this young man in the Gospel is in a much better place than many of our contemporaries.

How did the Lord answer this young man’s questions? He first begins to list off the commandments of God’s law.

Rules are important. We have rules for good health—you can’t eat a bag of pork rinds every day if you want to be physically fit; we have rules for good finances—don’t spend more than you make. So, too, if you want to have good mental health, there are some rules—learn to let go of anger and grudges, read a book once and a while to keep your brain active, maintain supportive relationships, develop a sense of gratitude for life’s blessings.

Every relationship has rules; rules which prescribe what is good and prohibit what is bad. When a bride and groom stand up in front of the Church and their families and recite their wedding vows, they are agreeing to the rules of their covenant relationship: we are going to be faithful even when we are tempted to be unfaithful, we are going to care for each other in times of sickness, in times of economic hardship, when physical beauty fades, we are going to raise our children to be good Christians.

Families have rules which support the harmony and happiness of the family. Don’t talk back to mom and dad, don’t fight with your siblings. When I was growing up, we had a lot of rules about keeping the house tidy: make your bed, clean your room, dirty plates and dishes weren’t to be left lying around, they were to be placed not just in the kitchen sink, but the dishwasher, and they had to be rinsed off first.

The spiritual life has rules, too. If you want to spiritually fit, if you want your relationship with God to be healthy—if you want this earthly journey to lead to eternal life with God, we must follow spiritual rules. And the commandments of God are the basic rules for that end.

Now of course, we all fail to keep these commandments for a variety of reasons. And the Christian recognizes the necessity of repentance, of confessing the serious violations of our covenant relationship with God. We admit to God even our smaller, venial sins, as well as we can, so that they do not pave the way for graver violations.

The young man in the Gospel, seems like he was doing pretty well. "Teacher,” he says “all of these commandments I have observed from my youth." Okay, good. Jesus recognizes that in this young man, the fundamental are in place, the aspirations are right, but the Lord sensed a restlessness in the young man. “You are lacking in one thing”, the Lord said. What was he lacking?

Despite his fidelity to the law, the young man was unwilling to detach himself from his possessions and follow the Lord radically.

“Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." The Lord knew that the man’s possessions had become a stumbling block to his salvation, so he illuminated this fact, and showed him what he had to do. This does not mean every single one of us has to get rid of all of our earthly possessions to follow Christ, but it certainly means that we must be spiritually detatched from them and dedicate them to God's purpose rather than our own selfish ends.

At that statement we then hear one of the saddest lines in all of the Gospels. “his face fell, and he went away sad.” The encounter with the Lord is meant to bring us conversion, joy, and life, but the young man walked away from that which would have brought him joy and that is always a sad story.

Last week in our parish youth group, we talked about joy, how following the commands of God leads to joy, how prayer and service bring us a joy that nothing else in the world can possibly give. Joy, is very different from happiness. Happiness is satisfaction with temporary things. I’m happy when the browns win, I’m happy when my chicken wings are at the perfect level of crispiness, I’m happy when the traffic light turns green at just the right time.

Joy, however, comes from our relationship with the eternal things of God: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Our hearts are filled not just with happiness, but joy, when we learn the Truth that comes from God, when we engage in truly good acts, caring for the poor, caring for a sick family member, feeding the hungry, forgiving those who hurt us. And we are filled with joy at the sight of beauty, true beauty, beautiful and timeless Christian art and architecture, the beauty of God’s creation.

The young man turns his heart away from joy because he chooses to value passing, temporary, earthly things, his possessions, over the truth, and goodness, and beauty of Jesus Christ.

I guarantee, that each of the saints being canonized this weekend, knew this secret to joy. Now, that doesn’t mean their lives were easy. Each faced tremendous suffering, but that did not diminish their joy. Because authentic joy does not diminish in the face of suffering, but can intensify it, when that suffering is embraced for the good of the Church and the spread of the Gospel.

As we celebrate the Eucharist today, may the Holy Spirit help us identify those attitudes or habits that we need to turn away from in order to experience the joy and eternal life God wants for us, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.